The dance days are over...

Saturday being St. Patrick's Day I made corned beef and cabbage for myself, my husband and a couple of friends whom I thought were joining us for dinner. Let me start off by letting you in on an Irish secret. Corned beef and cabbage is like the easiest thing in the world to make and looks extremely impressive and then you get to tell people you've been cooking it all day. The secret of this: The Crock Pot. In the morning I threw in some carrots, tiny potatoes, chopped up onion and then placed in the beef and filled the pot almost completely with water and some seasoning. Put the lid on top, set the heat for low and then waited for dinner. So friggin' easy, so amazingly delicious.

As I had mentioned earlier I had thought we were having some friends over for dinner. I get a text message from them at 10 asking what we're up to tonight and I tell her "Making corned beef and cabbage, and we were hoping you guys were joining us." We had discussed doing just this the week before but hadn't ironed out details yet, didn't seem like we needed to. She told me that she had been invited out by other people who she told she was free to. I told her that if she wants to go that's fine, but we wouldn't be invited so to let me know if she was planning on showing up to our house for dinner. This was probably a mistake of me because I wasn't fine if she didn't show up. I was actually pretty hurt. This was made all the more difficult that they were hanging out with my ex and his wife. Not that I have a problem with them anymore. Quite the opposite. The last time I saw them she was extremely nice and personable to me and I am nothing if not forgiving of people. But I do know that even though we may be on good making small talk, trading house buying and pregnancy advice, and not insulting each other anymore terms, we're not people that they'd invite out for a night on the town. My friend decided to go on the one outing there was no way we could join. After we had talked months about how much fun we had together on St. Patrick's Day and how we had to do something together this year and because I what, didn't set a time for her coming over she was bailing on me?

She asked if she was mad and of course I said no, because I'm a doormat and let people walk over me all the time. She then spent the rest of the day sending me text justifying her actions: we had just seen each other last week, she hadn't seen them in some time, she just wanted to live up some of the glory of past St. Patrick's days, etc. I knew she couldn't do that with a pregnant friend in tow. Kenny's not a drinker, I am. I can't move on the dance floor like I once could, and more importantly: I don't want to. I was excited for my crock pot dinner and potential game night. I liked thinking I wouldn't have to pay money to spend time with people at a bar where we couldn't hear each other and was full of drunk college kids and high school kids with fake id's. I was looking forward to being a grown up.

Then I started to cry. I realized something about me, about my life now. I am a grown up. The St. Patrick's Days of getting ex boyfriends to drink water after overdoing the liquor and tequila shots were over. The driving drunk friends home only to have them get lost on the way because they're too drunk to tell you where they live. The receiving of hilarious text pictures of aformetioned exboyfriends who fell into ditch puking on the way home that night. I think that's what I'll miss most of all. That was my life 5 years ago. My life now is picking out colors for the nursery. Inviting over the inlaws so all that food doesn't go to waste and then having an amazingly fun evening anyway. Having everyone rave over my ever so easy to make dinner recipe. Playing a game with my sister and brother in law at 9 pm and wondering if it's too late to start another. Cleaning up the dishes in my new remodeled kitchen and putting them in my favorite Christmas present from my parents: a new dishwasher. Having a husband who holds me in his arms as I cry out my death of youthful times and reminds me of happy times we have coming up. Yes, the dance parties of St. Patricks Day are over, but next year I'll have a new mostly Irish lad or lassie to celebrate with and we'll have all new traditions. I can't wait.

Leaving Red's

I put in my two weeks notice at Red Robin. It was pretty sad actually cause I do work with some pretty cool people there. And they were uber understanding about it all which I think made it worse. My assistant manager John said that he had to take a lot of those the past few weeks and mine was one of the hardest. It is important for me to leave while I'm still doing good and I feel that slipping lately. I haven't been motivated to work as hard there lately, and while I love the people I don't look forward to going into work like I once did. The timing just seems to make sense. While I'm done with my first trimester and I'm no longer feeling nauseous I'm not feeling extra limber either. I have a bit of a bump and my pants no longer button. Kinda a problem when you're having to wear jeans and a tucked in shirt to work. It's only going to get worse from here too. Ken's up for a new job in Morgan Hill and they're sending him an offer letter this week. With this offer will probably be a salary bump. And at very least, his commute will be shorter hence, more gas money saved.

And what will I do with my extra time, you may ask? I have a reading addiction lately, and I'm trying to be more domestic like beyond just doing laundry and dishes. Over my anniversary weekend, which I'll post more on later, I got some yarn for a baby blanket I hope to make. The only problem is I suck at crocheting. I can do straight lines and rectangles. Pretty boring baby blanket. So I got a bunch of crochet books from the library and now I need to actually figure them out. And now I'll actually have time to do that. I have 5 and a half months to get this house baby ready and I'm feeling so little motivation lately to do it. If I can even just put in an hour a day it will become much easier. Also, every Sunday will now be a day off. Woot!

When did good news become a bad thing?

For this post to make sense, you'll have to read this first ( this and this would probably be helpful too). Go ahead, read away. I'll wait here.

Ok welcome back, now that you're up to speed you're hopefully not mad that I didn't call you personally to tell you the going ons in my uterus since apparently that's how some people feel. Really, I just don't know how to tell people without it sounding like I'm bragging or I see myself as all important. And I'm not all important. I am to my family which was why I told them. But for my friends, I don't know. It's hard to slip it into conversation unless they ask. When someone tells me they're expecting I tell them congrats and ask how it's going, when they're due, if they want a boy or a girl, stuff like that. I don't give them a hard time with the "why didn't you tell me sooner?"

After I told my folks I called up both grandmothers and told them. I figured this was fine as both live on the other side of the country and would want to hear about their first and second (in Mimi's case) great grandchild. I didn't call up my aunts and uncles and cousins a) because I'm Irish and have a million of them, b) because I was still in the first trimester, am still paranoid about miscarrying, and c) didn't think they would mind if I waited a few weeks to make sure everything was ok. Why tell my grandmothers? Simply put because my mom was dying to talk about it and wanted to spread the news. My grandmother had said she wouldn't tell anyone since it was my news to spread and I figured that was good enough and I could call them a few at a time after my next check up that everything went ok with. Mom had told my aunt within a day and word spread from there. Whatever, at least everyone knows and I don't have to sound like a braggy attention whore.

Then Uncle Bob emails me a week later. "Hey Jules, we're super excited but it would be nice if you called your aunts too cause we don't want to just hear about this through your grandma and mom." Great, so now this happy little thing growing inside of me is having to share room with all the catholic guilt I'm getting. I had to explain back that it's still early in the pregnancy, I'm not ready to get excited about it (it's a month later and I'm still waiting for things to go wrong) and wanted to wait til at least three months before I let myself get excited which is hard to do if I'm going around telling people who are getting excited. Every call I make now is a call I have to make again if something goes wrong. I didn't want to make too many calls. So after a good check up last Valentine's Day I called my mom's 3 sisters and feel like I did my duty there.

We're past the first trimester now and it's not like we're keeping it a secret. We're just not seeking out people to tell them. Most people who see me regularly know though. It was hard keeping from my coworkers as I would occasionally be puking in the back due to smelling fish and chips or onion rings. Not to mention my ever growing baby bump. And most of my friends knew we were trying and asked how it was going. I would crack up over the people who said "Wow, I didn't see the post on facebook about it."

Ahh, facebook. There's a reason I'm weening off it. I get a text from a friend yesterday warning me about a comment someone made on my status about getting heartburn saying "pregnancy causes heart burn" saying I might want to delete it if we still aren't telling people about it. The person who commented on it is not someone we told we're pregnant to so it honestly just seems like speculation. And as Kenny and I have been married a year, pregnancy speculation is pretty rapid. I tell the friend that it's fine and seems like she's just fishing. The friend asks who we're telling, I answer anyone who asks. She tells me how she's making a special effort to tell all close friends about her pregnancy so they're not hurt if they hear it through the grapevine. She then threw in she didn't think she and her husband could be the kind of people who were only friends with other parents. I don't know where she was going with that because I fail to see how the two concepts are related. I can't imagine anyone thinking just because we haven't called them up specifically to tell them about something that is only going to affect Ken and I and our immediate family and not even for another 6 months would warrant a end of friendship. Am I wrong in that? Cause if so I'm quite delusional as to how the adult world works.